May 10, 2008

The sun was falling from the sky, the sky form beyond the horizon, beyond the sea. We made our way through the Churchgate streets, passing the uptown colleges resting in honest peace. The goldlight of the sun was spread all over the open canvas, we could see the open sky and the Marine Drive from some distance, the trees that covered up around us, made it look like a tunnel...tunnel with an end.The air harrowed all the slack in us as we walked into its territory, their territory...the wind, the sky, the sun ripening, and the rising tide.We had sweating Coke cans in our hands. We were talking about love and art, our purpose of life...we talked like we had all the time of our life. We did not know that. We came to the searim, sat there, popped open the cans and kissed the tin. Nothing could break Sun's fall, he didn't seem to care, the wind was going berserk, he screamed onto our faces and into our hair. I spilled the drink on the rock as I watched the crabs tittering above the crashing waves, dark and faceless...minding their own little business in their own little world of rocks and tide. The globe went smoky golden, and saw himself in the simmering mirror of the Bombay sea. A goldstreak, like a long shadow of Moses' staff...looking at me from above.I saw a city, marching into the ocean...a million hands on one rock, a million faces looking at the sun. I saw a multiplex of echoes running against the wind...and an ocean of molten steel and silver crashing up against its feet.Near the seawall under its shadow, the water looked grey and old, wrinkles under its surface and its sleepy odour mix't was looking at me. The waves frothed at the rockbay and at a distance in the water there lay a line of refuse, ardently clinging to each other, as they floated. They all were dead, the small black things resembling aborted fish eggs, sticks, plastic, paper; all of them were dead...because they floated. It looked ugly, it looked offensive, but it was there...it was Mumbai's, it was mine, it was ours. Every man comes to the harbor with a dream and the harbor gives him his cravings; his dreams and in return he gives her something.All that there lay, is a piece if all of us floating in the hair of Mumbai...dead...but ours. The animated metal shined as the lightgiver descended finally into his quiet repose. I stood up, Adi was playing 'Soldier of Fortune' by Deep Purple on his cell, we sang aloud. To the city who gave me my life and a place to call my own, a flag to find myself on earth...The Atlantis...